Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Lord Damocles wrote:
There are significantly more Custodes than there are Marines in any single Chapter.
Hell, the Custodes' losses at the battle of the Lion's Gate alone would have wiped out a Chapter twofold.

Are custodes not super hard to replace or something? It seems weird for custodes to have better stats and gear and be more numerous than (a given chapter of) marines. Not saying you're mistaken; it just violates the usual pattern of the more powerful thing also being more rare. Why isn't the imperium just pumping out custodes instead of marines?

I can't say why they haven't Custodified the Marine Chapters after they Primarisized them - but I'd guess there are so many more Custodes because Custodes haven't spent the last 10,000 years putting out fires, 100 Custodes at a time. Remember they've only recently returned to leaving the Throne World in large groups. Give the Ultramarines freedom from the Chapter limit, and 10,000 years of peace and recuitment, how large do they become?

Karol, when you veer off-topic to yell about eldar, it makes everything else you say seem less compelling.

As much as I dislike the marine bloat,

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Karol wrote:And GW already gave eldar more cross faction mix rules, then any marine or non marine faction in the game. Even factions that should be much easier to run alongside each other like csm and demons, or GSC and nids, Ad mecha and Knights can't pull out stuff eldar can just do for free.

Karol, when you veer off-topic to yell about eldar, it makes everything else you say seem less compelling.

Given you're a known Eldar player/collector, Wyldhunt, you'll excuse us for taking that statement with at least a grain of salt, no?

Not saying I agree with Karol's position here or anything like that, but hand-waving concerns about your faction away is a little, yeah...

That's how they worked back in 7th, right? I could see it working, but I'm not sure I like it. Treating a jump pack not as a jump pack but as some sort of method of group conveyance requires some pretty serious abstraction to sort of make sense of; and I'm usually the first one to say abstraction is fine. Even if you gave bikes and jump packs and termies and gravis armor and phobos armor and inceptor gravis armor all have their own special rule, you risk having a pretty large stack of special rules on each unit to justify their presence in 40k (even if you don't mix primaris and firstborn together in the same kill team).

No idea how things worked in 7th ed. I started to play in 8th. And in 8th, GK interceptors teleporters were kind of a like jump packs, but actualy weren't through out the entire edition GW was doing fixes to movment, movment types etc Often skiping that our stuff worked or was worded different. But that is mostly a "don't care" problem. But I don't think I have to explain abstraction working different to an eldar player. You have deep strike, jump pack, teleport etc units and stratagems etc that also work only kind of a like those of other armies. If there is no problem for eldar armies to have a separate set of rules for their own, why couldn't there a set of distinct rules for Deathwatch. All it takes is for someone at the design team to care about the army. As I assume we are still talking here about optimal, which mean potential, ways of dealing with specific rules for factions.

Both eldar factions consits of "elite" melee eldar, "shoty" eldar", skimmers, winged jump pack dudes, jet bikes etc. Somehow GW thinks those two factions can exists and by giving them special rules they can make the factions different. EVERYTHING can be made different, if someone at the design team wants to and has the will to do it. If someone wants they could write rules, different from the "core" army for lets say Farsight enclave. No kroot or other non tau, no etherals, no access or super limited access to new tau vehicles, but instead the Enclave likes it close and personal and in their stat line it is show with the revolutionary ability to not to try to hit your opponent with a fist, but rather their guns. Typhus DeathGuard all about the destroyer hive. Mass teleportation, no mortals because they can't survive around him, but larger then normal numbers of demons and pox walkers. Some stuff like could not be just a detachment, because it would not fit in to a world of no upgrades codex. WS in order to have their mounted armies can't just have a detachment and stratagems. They need outriders as troops, they need mounted HQs, upgrades on the actual outrider units etc. All of that can not be done as just part of the sm codex.

I mean, you could definitely argue that it was a weird choice to give a book to a single chapter that thematically should almost never fight anything other than chaos in the first place

You have not read GK lore then. GK fight and kill what ever the prognosticators tell them needs to be fought. Aliens. Imperials. They purge planets to stop a potential mass summoning. On one craftworld they eliminate and kill everyone and then soul shatter the matrix and the stones, so Slanesh is not fed. On another they eliminate a tyranid and demon incrussion from a craftworld and guard a mountain of soul stones till an eldar relief force arrives, because of prophecies etc. They board orc and GSC hulks and destroy them, if there is a risk of possesion or demonic/chaos forces feeding of them, or if the attack by the orcs/gsc could in sometime(and it could be centuries in the future) could lower the imperial defences enough to open a gate to chaos incrussions.

In the lore they also have distinct ways of fighting between brotherhoods. Mass teleporting hundrads of mind wipe servitors in to enemy ranks followed by teleport assault (and in order to be able to do it mainting gigantic servitor vats to produce them). Armoured attacks of multiple land raiders teleporting on to the enemy formations. The GK version of Librarius has its most powerful members create a "shadow in the warp effect" using sorcry, math and name magic. There is one brotherhood that blows up stuff from orbit and only goes down, when the planet/starship/hulk/etc is on the brink of exploding. There is a brotherhood that uses blood magic and name magic, where they imobilise a population of what ever they are attacking, and then ritualy soul kill each person one after another.

GK brotherhoods are distinct enough from each other, and they have more "units" and sub brotherhoods then there are rule for in the codex. So yeah there are interceptors, purgators and purfires that wear terminator armour, as well as there are purifire NDK, constructs larger then NDKs (technicaly there are also two titans, but those never leave titan), there are servitor bombs, cloned saint that are martyred during or before an attack etc. There just aren't rule for all those things. And there are no rules for those things, because there are no models for them. And there are no models, because the army isn't very popular. And it ain't very popular, because it doesn't have very exiting rules and doesn't have a good history of a power curve. Which closes the circle, of an army is not getting a popular armies support, because it is not popular. Hardly a GK only problem, but one felt specialy strong for an army that can't just be glued on to another one.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

That's exactly how we ended up with the Marine bloat.
Chapter has some unique units -> give them their own full list -> Chapter needs more units to fill out full list -> give them a bunch of generic units to fill gaps which were created by stretching them into a standalone faction to begin with -> progressively add new units to make Chapter less like generic Marines, and then add units from generic Marines so that they don't feel left out.

There's no reason for Tactical Squads to be trying to also represent Strike Squads; but equally there is no reason for Grey Knights to be a standalone faction on par with standard Marines.

But sometimes we go really hardcore in to the past to make the units be the same. Space Wolves for example. I have seen their yellow 2ed codex. Blood Claws, Grey Hunters, Long Fangs , Wolf Guard were nothing like tacticals, assault marines or devastators. Not just different rules and stats, but gear options, unit size, and as the editions went further the rules changed even more. Unless I missed some WD FAQ, 3ed or 5th ed SW had bucket loads of SW specific stuff. They could take Lemman Russ tanks, had scouts who were veteran, got wolves and thunder wolves, wulfen etc.

Same thing goes for armies like BT. I don't know where they got their first codex or set of rules. But their 10+ marine size squads are a more HH/chaos marines thing, then regular marine stuff. WS biker armies can not be represented by anything in w40k right now, and their whole theme is all dudes on bikes, all the time.

Without inventing or giving certain armies their non existing special rules, the difference between a IF, CF and Salamander may not feel like much, in a world where no model=no rules. But those other armies are distinctly different, and they just don't work from a base of codex space marine. It is a bit like telling a tau player to just play with counts as eldar rule. Both armies are shoty and fast moving, so as long as they don't try to go full melee it should be key, right? of course not. We don't tell GSC to just play with fewer tanks either? And if those cases are a thing, marine players shouldn't be told to play venguard ultramarines or BT to have fun. A DA army shouldn't be, marine flyers, 1 DA special character, all the units marines have to play to be relevant and a DA skimmer.

Deathwatch is kinda the exact opposite of GW’s 10th edition philosophy. It should be a collection of assorted marines from a diverse range of chapters all personalized with odd gear. I think ir]t was a mistake to spin them up to a full army, but you can’t unscramble eggs. (Same with GK). At this point what can they do that’s not just going to screw over all the players who have built armies over multiple editions?

For DW I think the agents is the best place for them. Give them the 3? Kill teams datasheets and then a detachment. Any imperial army should be able to toss in a KT as backup with the normal agent rules, but if you want to take a full army, you use the detachment, which should let you take as many KTs as you want, let you give a captain a guardian spear, etc. to let you field the army you build over 7th forward.

Imho, etc.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Karol wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

1. What do you do about the oddball combined units like jump packs/bikes hanging out with footsloggers though? Adding termies to a power armor squad is easy enough (ignoring that it gets rid of the termies' deepstrike), having a jump pack in a squad that prevents you from using it is awkward.

1. Give them rules? Like scouts that just because they take a shotgun can move and perform actions. Maybe a unit with jump pack moves easier through cover, a biker carries more sensors etc so they have a longer engage range or can do objective from further away

That's how they worked back in 7th, right? I could see it working, but I'm not sure I like it. Treating a jump pack not as a jump pack but as some sort of method of group conveyance requires some pretty serious abstraction to sort of make sense of; and I'm usually the first one to say abstraction is fine. Even if you gave bikes and jump packs and termies and gravis armor and phobos armor and inceptor gravis armor all have their own special rule, you risk having a pretty large stack of special rules on each unit to justify their presence in 40k (even if you don't mix primaris and firstborn together in the same kill team).

Every edition has messed with the units in some weird way that doesn't quite work. It's worth remembering that the modern teams are pretty recent. 7th only had the Proteus KT and it was only halfway through 8th when we got a Primaris option that mixed Intercessors with Aggressors and Inceptors. 9th is where the previous Fortis swapped out Intercessors for the unreleased Heavy variant and renamed itself Indomitor. Spectrus got added and was probably the best designed KT at the time and Fortis went from being a weird, but powerful means of spamming Outriders to nuked out of the game.

I'm not sure I can say the Kill Teams have ever really worked. The 9th version was mostly about breaking the 3 model limit on stuff like Outriders and Eliminators with Combat Squad, but wasn't at all a team. SIA has always been important for making the unit worth taking, which is a big part of the problem with the current iteration. You have to take 5 models you wouldn't normally and without SIA they don't match up to the other half. Getting special rules based on models has had some value here and there but has always been a little odd. It's worth noting that Jump Packs and Bikes have always been a good way to extend charges.

So.... what to do? I actually think 10th is a good starting point. Get rid of the 5 man option; it shouldn't exist. Treating them as 10 mans with extra weapons options works pretty well and the 2 model limit creates the kind of variety they've always tried to make work via other means. They just have to be worth taking knowing they don't have the same rules as the models that represent them. Give the base of the unit Deathwatch Bolt Rifles or whatever with SIA and just understand that an Indomitor KT is a lot closer in price to a 10 man Heavy Intercessor squad than it is to the 5/2/2/1 of models you represent and I think we're pretty close.

I don't think they need a ton of special rules to work. Spectrus might, but that's what the Wargear rules are for. Make them more about taking equipment than weapons and I think they have a place. I think if they put out a DW Primaris Upgrade sprue with like an Intercessor frag cannon or something they can drop the Proteus and merge it into Fortis a this point. I'm actually mildly curious about taking the Intercessors out of Fortis though and using Assault Intercessors as their baseline instead with like Outriders, Jump Assaults and Bladeguard in the mix to make a proper melee killteam while Proteus becomes the home of Intercessors, Hellblasters and Terminators along with a few others. They could also just let the Intercessors replace their Bolt Rifle with a Chainsword and Heavy Pistol though.

I know (as I've mentioned before) that a lot of folks thought of the combat squad with 5 and 5 was cheesy, and I think that's valid.... But for me, in order for a KT to work, bikes in it have to be able to move like bikes and jump infantry have to move like jump infantry.

So if they keep 5/2/2/1, I need them to let me break coherency for the bikers and jumpers.

If they don't?

Well, I just won't take bikes and jumpers in the KT- I'll put them in regular units where they get to move like they're supposed to be able to move.

But as others have said, then they just feel like regular marines.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Karol wrote:And GW already gave eldar more cross faction mix rules, then any marine or non marine faction in the game. Even factions that should be much easier to run alongside each other like csm and demons, or GSC and nids, Ad mecha and Knights can't pull out stuff eldar can just do for free.

Karol, when you veer off-topic to yell about eldar, it makes everything else you say seem less compelling.

Given you're a known Eldar player/collector, Wyldhunt, you'll excuse us for taking that statement with at least a grain of salt, no?

Not saying I agree with Karol's position here or anything like that, but hand-waving concerns about your faction away is a little, yeah...

I admit my bias. However, Karol's comments about mixing factions were a non-sequitur. I wasn't suggesting that DW (in whatever form they end up existing) should be more difficult to include in an imperial army. When I brought up eldar in the post Karol was replying to, it was to illustrate the concept that having a separate codex that's basically a copy of another codex with one or two minor changes feels silly/unnecessary. I.e. having Codex: Iyanden purely to add 1 datasheet and some extra guns for wraithguard would be silly. I was using this to draw a parallel to how DW being their own book might not really make sense if you can't make Kill Teams work as they'd basically just marines with extra gun options and a Corvus datasheet.

Karol seems to have used the brief mention of space elves as a launchpad for complaining about disparity in factions' ability to ally with eachother. Which isn't really the topic at hand and thus seems to be Karol finding an excuse to rant about eldar (again).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

No idea how things worked in 7th ed. I started to play in 8th. And in 8th, GK interceptors teleporters were kind of a like jump packs, but actualy weren't through out the entire edition GW was doing fixes to movment, movment types etc Often skiping that our stuff worked or was worded different. But that is mostly a "don't care" problem. But I don't think I have to explain abstraction working different to an eldar player. You have deep strike, jump pack, teleport etc units and stratagems etc that also work only kind of a like those of other armies. If there is no problem for eldar armies to have a separate set of rules for their own, why couldn't there a set of distinct rules for Deathwatch.

I understand that teleportation packs and jump/jetpacks can all exist and be different things. I was replying to this suggestion from you:

Maybe a unit with jump pack moves easier through cover, a biker carries more sensors etc so they have a longer engage range or can do objective from further away

Outside of DW, when a model in a unit has a jetpack or teleportation pack or whatever, the whole unit does. What you appear to be suggesting is that having a single guy with a jump pack in a squad of guys who otherwise don't somehow makes the squad as a whole better at moving through cover. So where I'm having difficulty with your suggestion is that I'm struggling to picture how that works in-universe. Is the jump packer guy... flying in circles at high speed to scoop up each of his teammates (including the terminator and the guy on a bike) and carry them over the crater?

I'm not saying that the concept of taking different types of marines (jump packers, bikers, etc.) in a squad and causing each unique model to bring a special rule to the unit is a bad one. (Although as I pointed out in that post, I have other concerns with that approach.) It's just the notion that one guy having a jump pack somehow helps the rest of the unit move quickly feels odd.

Both eldar factions consits of "elite" melee eldar, "shoty" eldar", skimmers, winged jump pack dudes, jet bikes etc. Somehow GW thinks those two factions can exists and by giving them special rules they can make the factions different.

I think it's pretty disingenuous to claim that craftworlders and drukhari are as similar as something like BA and generic marines or DW and generic marines.

I mean, you could definitely argue that it was a weird choice to give a book to a single chapter that thematically should almost never fight anything other than chaos in the first place

You have not read GK lore then. GK fight and kill what ever the prognosticators tell them needs to be fought. Aliens. Imperials. They purge planets to stop a potential mass summoning. On one craftworld they eliminate and kill everyone and then soul shatter the matrix and the stones, so Slanesh is not fed. On another they eliminate a tyranid and demon incrussion from a craftworld and guard a mountain of soul stones till an eldar relief force arrives, because of prophecies etc. They board orc and GSC hulks and destroy them, if there is a risk of possesion or demonic/chaos forces feeding of them, or if the attack by the orcs/gsc could in sometime(and it could be centuries in the future) could lower the imperial defences enough to open a gate to chaos incrussions.

That's a valid point and a good way to give them an excuse to fight something other than daemons.

There's no reason for Tactical Squads to be trying to also represent Strike Squads; but equally there is no reason for Grey Knights to be a standalone faction on par with standard Marines.

I hear you. But the distinction here, the reason I don't think there's an argument for absorbing GK into another faction, is that what content they do have works and wouldn't really fit if you tried to absorb them into another faction. Whereas DK are struggling to make some of their unique elements work and could *probably* be absorbed into the generic marine book with limited friction. When I think DW, I think:
* Kill Teams
* Special Ammo
* Xenos Tech/special guns

With Kill Teams not being a great fit for 10th's rules and also arguably not making sense in the context of a 2k point game (see: the weirdness of having a jump pack and bike in a footslogger squad), it becomes a little tempting to just turn the special ammo and xeno tech into a detachment rule and enhancements respectively. Give them some strats that represent tactics designed to counter xenos, and you've got your anti-alien flavor.

I'm not saying I want DW to get absorbed into the marine book. I'm just saying there don't seem to be a lot of reasons they have to be their own book either. Assuming you get rid of Kill Teams because they don't make sense for larger battles.

PenitentJake wrote:
I know (as I've mentioned before) that a lot of folks thought of the combat squad with 5 and 5 was cheesy, and I think that's valid.... But for me, in order for a KT to work, bikes in it have to be able to move like bikes and jump infantry have to move like jump infantry.

So if they keep 5/2/2/1, I need them to let me break coherency for the bikers and jumpers.

If they don't?

Well, I just won't take bikes and jumpers in the KT- I'll put them in regular units where they get to move like they're supposed to be able to move.

But as others have said, then they just feel like regular marines.

The extra movement is often pretty useful for getting the squad in melee. They can move up while retaining coherency and be the point of a charge and use the pile in to get the rest of the squad in. I get the desire to break them off, but realistically I can do that by just taking a squad of outriders. A lone biker isn't doing much beyond being a gun that dies when fired.

As for what they SHOULD do? Tough question really. I'm okay with them just being.... vaguely normal, but they need to be priced that way. Granted, outriders themselves suffer from the same weaknesses as Intercessors, so bolting 2 together doesn't really solve any problems for anyone. Being the tip of a spear charge isn't a bad role, but only works if the Kill Team can be configured with some melee punch, which is why it all works better in Proteus. Give Fortis some DWTHs and we'll talk.

In prior editions Jump Packs enabled Fall Back and Shoot, which would be a solid reason for Inceptors though honestly their guns are probably fine. The Indomitor is probably fine if the special rule was better and the price was closer to a 10 man Heavy Intercessor (or if they always had SIA). Inceptors don't need the mobility as much as VanVets and Bikers do with their melee focus.

None of the points you have raised in any way invalidate or disprove what I wrote, in fact, you've made my point stronger.
The Grey Knights having one base of operations severely limits their capability to get involved in conflicts, and the background routinely brings up that single units are deployed to stop an entire Daemonic incursion because the Chapter cannot do anything more. When they do deploy en masse, it's because things have gone very very wrong.
The same goes for the Deathwatch except their deployments are by design and not necessity. Having the Deathwatch get minis was cool but they should have been as an option for Marine or Imperium armies because that is how the Chapter operates. Yes, sometimes a whole Watch Fortress will go to war but that is extremely rare and not enough to justify a "full" army.
Compare that to the Sororitas who often have garrisons at the smallest of Imperial shrines and the point I was making becomes rather obvious.
The three Chambers are not comparable. The Grey Knights and Deathwatch are elite strike forces intended for extreme missions where the deployment of single units is either intentional or not optional, while the Sororitas are a standing army with a fleet to boot that can choose freely to deploy ten sisters or ten thousand.


I don't recall saying that Grey Knights and Deathwatch should just be hamfisted into the Agents index with no changes. In fact, I specifically said the opposite.
I'm not going to do a full breakdown of how exactly I would do an Agents Codex because that would take a very long time but long story short, 90% of the last 3 editions of Grey Knight and Deathwatch units have been "Oh crap we can only release a single model for each of these factions (or none in the case of Deathwatch), quick jam in all the generic Marine vehicles".
It would not be hard to trim the fat and make the two Chapters fit in an Agents book, in fact it might be the best way to make an Agents book playable.

Eh, a Watch Captain is in charge of 5 kill teams. It is hardly outside of the realm of possibility to call on 3-4 or so of them to deal with a large scale threat which is pretty close to what you see in a 2000 point game.

Granted, I also quite liked 8th edition, where my Deathwatch were nearly outnumbered by the Loyal 32 in terms of bodies on the table, but I don't really want that nonsense to return either.

The Grey Knights having one base of operations severely limits their capability to get involved in conflicts, and the background routinely brings up that single units are deployed to stop an entire Daemonic incursion because the Chapter cannot do anything more. When they do deploy en masse, it's because things have gone very very wrong.
The same goes for the Deathwatch except their deployments are by design and not necessity. Having the Deathwatch get minis was cool but they should have been as an option for Marine or Imperium armies because that is how the Chapter operates.

Yeah. If we were to go back in time and do it over again, it would probably make more sense to treat GK and DW as the sort of faction that sends one or two units to support larger forces rather than treating them as their own full factions. Not that I'm necessarily saying we should move towards that now that the genie's out of the bottle, but I think most people would agree that this approach would be more true to the fluff.

Yes, sometimes a whole Watch Fortress will go to war but that is extremely rare and not enough to justify a "full" army.

My thinking is that if you do want DW to be a full army that deploys en masse, then you're most likely looking at a Fortress-goes-to-war scenario. And that being the case, I feel like they would organize themselves in a way that makes sense for that style of conflict. For instance, by putting the jump packers in a squad of jump packers instead of mixing them in with your tactical squad equivalents alongside a terminator.

But again, then you're looking an awful lot like generic marines.

DW should be like GK in the original DoW video game, you can "summon" a squad for a high price from Reserves, and they are a super powerful Elite unit of 5 dudes with SIA.

 LunarSol wrote:
Eh, a Watch Captain is in charge of 5 kill teams. It is hardly outside of the realm of possibility to call on 3-4 or so of them to deal with a large scale threat which is pretty close to what you see in a 2000 point game.

Granted, I also quite liked 8th edition, where my Deathwatch were nearly outnumbered by the Loyal 32 in terms of bodies on the table, but I don't really want that nonsense to return either.

At that point, they're not operating as Deathwatch specialist but rather just a regular Chapter deployment that happens to have some fancy swords and planes. It's more accurate to just use regular Marine rules.

 Gert wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Eh, a Watch Captain is in charge of 5 kill teams. It is hardly outside of the realm of possibility to call on 3-4 or so of them to deal with a large scale threat which is pretty close to what you see in a 2000 point game.

Granted, I also quite liked 8th edition, where my Deathwatch were nearly outnumbered by the Loyal 32 in terms of bodies on the table, but I don't really want that nonsense to return either.

At that point, they're not operating as Deathwatch specialist but rather just a regular Chapter deployment that happens to have some fancy swords and planes. It's more accurate to just use regular Marine rules.

I don't necessarily disagree with that. Part of the reason I don't hate reorganizing my kill teams into Gladius or something. I still quite enjoy the Kill Team unit structure and don't mind it showing up on the table either. Like a coordinated assault with a spectrus and proteus while an indomitor guards the home base works pretty well thematically. I think it works well enough, particularly when you consider that from a fluff perspective most 40k games are meant to be tackled by a single Lt with maybe a few tacticals for support.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
@PenitentJake:
I think part of figuring out how to handle inquisitors is figuring out what their inclusion adds to the game. Like, how do you want a sororitas army with an inquisitor to differ from one without? Are they losing Acts of Faith in exchange for some sort of "Ordo Training" mechanic because of the shady stuff the inquisitors talks them into doing? Is the inquisitor literally just an additional beatstick option with some different lore? Are the inquisitor and their henchmen the stars, and the sororitas are just there to provide a framework that lets the henchmen show off? Each of those would call for pretty different amounts of support ranging from just adding a couple datasheets to the codex to overhauling how the faction works when an inquisitor is present.

Roll them into the Agents book if you have to, but there are a few things I would demand:
1. Mixed squads, IE terminators mixing with power armor
2. All their special weapons, including the Infernus Heavy Bolter and Frag cannon, and be able to take multiples of them per squad.
3. All unique vehicles, especially the Corvus Blackstar

1. What do you do about the oddball combined units like jump packs/bikes hanging out with footsloggers though? Adding termies to a power armor squad is easy enough (ignoring that it gets rid of the termies' deepstrike), having a jump pack in a squad that prevents you from using it is awkward.

2 and 3. Reasonable asks, but do you feel like the DW justifies being its own rulebook if they're basically just the marine codex with Corvus Blackstar datasheet added and slightly unusual special weapons? If the answer is yes, that's a valid opinion. I'm just not sure I agree.

Like, imagine having a separate book for Iyanden that basically just adds the hemlock wraitihfighter datasheet and unlocks a new weapon for wraithguard/blades. That would feel kind of unnecessary, right?

There are a couple of the existing Chapters that already feel like they are just "Marine codex plus wargear and a plane". I mean, unless you are running Deathwing or Ravenwing the Dark Angels codex is pretty redundant. The only one that does stand-out in a major way is Space Wolves. If these guys are unique enough to deserve their own codex, I think we can imagine DW to be as well.

Now, how to do this? What if DW squads HAD to be mixed. Get rid of access to all the "normal" codex units, at least in practice. No 10-man Helbaster units for example. Also, today's marine shopping list is A LOT more diverse than it was a few years ago. Add into that that DW are one of the few places left to find firstborn jumppackers.

Who says the mixed squads need to be the same as they have been? Squad A is made up from Tacticals, Terminators, Devastators. Unit B is Intercessors, Helblasters, Assault Intercessors, Infernus. Unit C is Inceptors, Assault marines, Suppressors, Assault Intercessors with Jumppacks. Unit D is Heavy Intercessors, Aggressors, Eradicators. Unit E is Invader ATV, Outriders, (and maybe firstborn bikers?) This would solve a lot of the movement headache. Just say you move at the speed of the slowest guy in the squad. It would also be interesting once Characters start joining.

How you pay points for a squad might need some thinking though, but I have some ideas.

 cuda1179 wrote:

Now, how to do this? What if DW squads HAD to be mixed. Get rid of access to all the "normal" codex units, at least in practice.

Having played when this was the case.... no.

 LunarSol wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

Now, how to do this? What if DW squads HAD to be mixed. Get rid of access to all the "normal" codex units, at least in practice.

Having played when this was the case.... no.

Would it be more palatable if these units still existed, but were no longer Battleline?

There are a couple of the existing Chapters that already feel like they are just "Marine codex plus wargear and a plane". I mean, unless you are running Deathwing or Ravenwing the Dark Angels codex is pretty redundant. The only one that does stand-out in a major way is Space Wolves. If these guys are unique enough to deserve their own codex, I think we can imagine DW to be as well.

In my opinion, SW/BA/DA don't really need to be their own books. A lot of what makes them "unique" boils down to renaming existing units (Grey Hunters = tacticals, Long Fangs = Devastators, etc.) or arbitrarily making what should be generic units faction locked (Only BA ever thought to stick flamers on a predator, only BA thought to put a librarian in a dreadnaught, only BA thought to give artificer armor to their vanguard vets, only SW ever fielded beefy mutant marines, etc.)

 cuda1179 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

Now, how to do this? What if DW squads HAD to be mixed. Get rid of access to all the "normal" codex units, at least in practice.

Having played when this was the case.... no.

Would it be more palatable if these units still existed, but were no longer Battleline?

Not really. The issue has always been that GW simply doesn't do categorical updates well and will absolutely let less popular factions wallow in squaller to only be looked at if they succeed and need to be stamped down. I mean, they couldn't even bother to make Aggressor Power Firsts WS 4+ in the Indomitor KT when they changed the normal unit.

When DW could only take their own stuff they were absolutely miserable to play. Taking only elite stuff meant you had no chaff and everything was just a marine body with a few extra points for SIA. When Marines got new toys; DW did not. When Marine toys got sorely needed buffs; DW did not. Maybe there's a way to make it work, but I will say, definitely, GW does not have the ability to accomplish that task.

 LunarSol wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

Now, how to do this? What if DW squads HAD to be mixed. Get rid of access to all the "normal" codex units, at least in practice.

Having played when this was the case.... no.

Would it be more palatable if these units still existed, but were no longer Battleline?

Not really. The issue has always been that GW simply doesn't do categorical updates well and will absolutely let less popular factions wallow in squaller to only be looked at if they succeed and need to be stamped down. I mean, they couldn't even bother to make Aggressor Power Firsts WS 4+ in the Indomitor KT when they changed the normal unit.

When DW could only take their own stuff they were absolutely miserable to play. Taking only elite stuff meant you had no chaff and everything was just a marine body with a few extra points for SIA. When Marines got new toys; DW did not. When Marine toys got sorely needed buffs; DW did not. Maybe there's a way to make it work, but I will say, definitely, GW does not have the ability to accomplish that task.

To be fair, they have a better chance of doing it in a digital age. Before, once the codex was off the printer, that was it. You were stuck with that book until they made a new one. Which may not have even been in the following edition. Which could end you up in odd spots like BA dev squads being better and cheaper then vanilla marine ones, simply from when the books came out. Units that were the same, but in different books would not have the same rules.

Now, I hear you. Even with the ability to FAQ or put out a new PDF datasheet, GW will often not. But at least there is a chance of it happening.

They definitely can, it just takes time and attention which is something GW has paid neither of when it comes to DW unless we're a meta problem. That's something I do not see changing, particularly as we've already been nerfed out of this edition and left at the bottom through multiple updates. At least the codex provides a bit of a safety net now.

 LunarSol wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

Now, how to do this? What if DW squads HAD to be mixed. Get rid of access to all the "normal" codex units, at least in practice.

Having played when this was the case.... no.

Having played when you had to roll scatter dice for each Assault Marine in a 10 man unit to see how far and which direction each individual Assault marine deviated after a Jump, Super No.

I don't want to play one page cookie cutter, and I don't want to play The Campaign for North Africa either. Just a little complexity that double dips to create same-faction variety.

PenitentJake wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

I'd be okay with an Imperial Agents codex as a solution, provided the following also happens:

- We don't lose units from any current Codexes. I would be fine with 100+ datasheets in the book.

But surely, you MUST realize that IF Chambers get moved to Agents, they will lose units, right?

I was talking about what I would be okay with. i.e. no hard feelings.

Yes, that many data sheets would be crazy. Then again, if GW were to take away Interceptors, I would go crazy.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
100+ units in a book designed to act as bonus units for the already best supported factions in the game is wacky.

Grey Knights could be reduced to:
Hero
Terminators
Power Armour guys
Land Raider
Dreadnought
without losing too many options, and would [could] become thematically stronger as a result.

Well, if Power Armor guys means Strikes, Interceptors, Purgators, and Purifiers; and if Dreadnought also includes Dreadknight; and Hero includes all the current HQ options, you've already got most of the last Codex. Other than the Stormraven, I'm not sure what else there needs to be.